Google Hurtling Towards Historic Forced Breakup
Google has already been labelled a monopoly by the courts, and its different divisions ranging from its ad tech business to its search engine have been singled out for unfair – and in some cases unlawful – practices by enforcement agencies spanning from Australia to the US and Europe too.
Now though, the Alphabet-owned company is the closest it has ever been to a historic forced breakup.
The US Justice Department is considering asking a federal judge to force Google to sell off parts of its business. If realised, it could be the biggest forced breakup of a US company since AT&T was dismantled in 1984.
A few weeks ago, US Judge Amit Mehta ruled recently that Google broke antitrust laws in both online search and search text ads markets.
Antitrust enforcers are now weighing a breakup to mitigate Google’s dominance in search, reported Bloomberg.
Judge Mehta could also order Google to provide access to the underlying data it uses to build its search results and artificial intelligence products, it said.
The Justice Department said that it “is considering behavioural and structural remedies that would prevent Google from using products such as Chrome, Play, and Android to advantage Google search and Google search-related products and features.”
The 32-page document offers potential options for the judge to consider as the case moves to the remedy phase.
The department has said that it will provide a fuller proposal on remedies next month and then begin gathering additional documents and evidence from Google for a two-week remedies hearing in April.
Justice Mehta said he will rule on the remedies by August 2025.
The DOJ said in the filing that Google gained scale and data benefits from its illegal distribution agreements with other tech companies that made its search engine the default option on smartphones and web browsers.
That assumption is broadly reflected in Australia too. Recently, following an extensive investigation by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) into Google’s search services in Australia, two major telecom companies – Telstra and Optus – agreed that they will no longer have exclusive agreements with Google Search to have the service pre-installed as the default search engine on Android devices that they sell.
The US Justice Department said it’s considering proposals related to Google’s dominance over search text ads, such as requirements that the company provide more information and control to advertisers over where their ads appear. The department may further request that Google be restricted from investing in search competitors or potential rivals.
Google has, expectedly, been critical of the Justice Department’s filing, terming it as “radical,” saying it would have “significant unintended consequences for consumers, businesses, and American competitiveness.”
The DOJ’s proposals go “well beyond the legal scope of the Court’s decision about Search distribution contracts,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, wrote in a blog post.
Google went on to claim that unreasonable restrictions on how Google promotes its search engine would create friction for consumers and harm businesses; changes to the online advertising market would make online ads less valuable for publishers and merchants, and less useful for consumers; and even stated that “splitting off Chrome or Android would break them — and many other things.”